104 CATTLE LONGHORNS 



best milch-cows. Their twisted horns give them a peculiar 

 and picturesque cast of countenance." 



The horn shown in Plate XX VI I.A, copied from Gilpin, 

 is identical in shape with the ancient hunting horn; 1 

 but it differs materially from the modern horn of the breed. 

 After hunting horns fell into disuse there would be no need 

 to breed to a special shape of horn, and irregularity in the 

 direction of the horn would follow as a natural consequence. 

 The change of fashion in favour of the Shorthorn and, in some 

 districts, the Hereford the two breeds most responsible for 

 supplanting the Longhorn was no doubt largely due to the 

 more rapidly maturing qualities of these breeds. The early 

 hunting owners of Longhorns would depend more upon wild 

 game than upon cattle for their meat supply, and the Long- 

 horns, in comparatively limited numbers, would be kept by 

 them and by the poorer classes who could not afford to eat 

 meat, as milch-kine and as work-oxen, rather than as graziers 

 for beef production. 



Robert Bakewell of Dishley, Leicestershire, accredited as 

 the great originator of the system of improvement of live 

 stock by in-and-in breeding, selected about 1750 or 1751 the 

 Longhorn among cattle upon which to carry out his operations. 

 He started his female stock with two heifers reared at Canley 

 a red and a yellow respectively. His object was to increase 

 the rate at which they come to maturity, to improve the 

 quality of flesh, and to reduce the size and" coarseness of 

 bone. In this, so far as his own cattle were concerned, he 

 so far succeeded well, but at the sacrifice to some extent of 

 constitution and the powers of milk production. He died at 

 the age of seventy, in 1795, without transmitting the secrets 

 of his system, or recording die lessons he had learned from the 

 experiences of his extensive breeding experiments ; and on 

 this account it has been asserted that the work which he 

 began was not carried to a successful issue. 



But before Bakewell's time there were early improvers of 

 the Longhorn as there were before the Collings in the case 



1 A similar horn for calling in cattle from the sands was found at 

 the farm of Drumburgh, on the Solway, and is now in Tullie House 

 museum. 



